Balancing Pose

The Homosexuality Debate in Church: Proposal for Engagement

Since the ELCA Churchwide Assembly vote last August, Lutherans--at least in my circle--have done much more talking about whether homosexual behavior is a sin than we did before the vote was actually taken. On this issue, it does not take long for at least a few people in the conversation to stake out a position and conclude that all other positions on the questions around Christianity and homosexuality are wrong. When we find ourselves in polarized conversations, maybe these exercises will help.

We're actually all Christians here.

Within the church--for example, within congregations whose members are deciding to leave or stay in the ELCA, or to give or withhold giving to a synod or churchwide ministry--are people trying to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, their Savior and Lord. If you do not believe that someone is trying to be such a disciple, ask them. Figure out first that you all name the same name. Understand that this person on the other side, whose opinions may puzzle or repel you, is a brother or sister in Christ. 

The category of family, as fraught with difficulty as it is, may help us here. Most of us have had the experience of not understanding at all how our dad can think the way he does, or why our sister makes the choices she makes. Usually, as hard as it is, we manage to hang in there with them--and they with us--in at least some sort of relationship that often features forgiveness, humility, love, and conversation. All of these things help us when living and disagreeing with brothers and sisters in Christ.

Do you believe that the other people in this conversation (the present conversation, there in your church basement, or the Sunday school classroom, not a "conversation" in the abstract) are Christians? If you do, what implications does this have for how you listen and talk to them? If you do not, what would they need to do to convince you that they are brothers and sisters of yours in Christ? Do others believe you are a Christian? What do they need from you to agree that, in Christ, you are in this together?

What are our shared interests?

This question comes from literature on negotiation. It helps us focus on what two parties both need from any decision-making process. Can we agree, for instance, that we all want people to know Jesus? If so, why do we want that? This is a pretty interesting conversation all on its own. Before diving into arguments about the authority of the Bible or the gift of sexuality, why not ask each other, "Why are you in the church? What does Jesus mean for you? How has a relationship with Christ comforted, challenged, healed, and created faith and faithfulness in your life?"

What are other shared interests among those in the conversation(s) you are part of on Christianity and homosexuality? Are there things we can all agree we want to avoid (for example, can we agree that we want to avoid doing harm to ministries we all want to support, or diminishing the work of the church to support the faithfulness of those who are married)? It might be useful to make a list and go back to it at those points when the conversation drifts toward polarization. 

Putting the neighbor's argument into words they recognize.

The eighth commandment prohibits false witness. Luther's Small Catechism extends the meaning of this commandment to speaking well of the neighbor and interpreting the neighbor's actions in the kindest way. So I suggest this experiment. Can you interpret your neighbor's argument in the kindest way? Can you listen to it, regard it charitably, and repeat it back to them so that they say recognize it as their own? Can you even help them to make the argument they want to make better? My best teachers have been able to do this in class discussions, helping the rest of us say as clearly and convincingly as possible what we are haltingly putting into words. The result is that the person feels honored and heard. From that place of honor, they are able to listen better, even to the news that others think differently about an issue. 

Acknowledging the weak points in your argument.

Many of us long for an alternative to "Tea Party Politics" in the midst of difficult conversations in the church. Everyone's argument in the Christianity and homosexuality debate has flaws and weaknesses. Otherwise, Christians of good will would not find themselves disagreeing so dramatically. If we really believe that God's power is made perfect in weakness, if we really believe that Christ justifies the ungodly, we do not need to pretend the infallibility of ourselves or our logic. Give it up. Acknowledge the strengths in an opponent's argument. Acknowledge the places where your own argument fails to make the best sense of scripture, tradition, or experience. You are, after all, in a conversation with other thoughtful Christians who are trying as hard as you are to follow Jesus. Together, you will be better than you could be separately. Honest. "Those people" have something to teach you. One way to find out what they know that you don't is to be clear in public about what you do not know or cannot (yet) make sense of. 

O Lord, it's hard to be humble.

The classic country song reports, "O Lord, it's hard to be humble, when you're perfect in every way." Since Christians understand ourselves to be sinners--still sinners--even as we are also redeemed and are being formed into the image of Christ, we should have a somewhat easier time being humble than the one who "can't wait to look in the mirror, 'cuz I get better lookin' each day." When we are humble enough to say, "I could be wrong," space opens up in any conversation. 

And in fact, I could be wrong--about anything. Really. So could you. Admitting such a thing out loud is not just a rhetorical device intended to keep the conversation from breaking down. It is a confession that God is bigger than our best arguments and often acting in the world in ways that call us, as well as others, to repentance and amendment of life. We could be wrong.

Other ideas for engagement?

These are all elements I would like to see in our conversations on homosexuality and Christianity. Some of you have a lot more experience in these conversations than I do. What is not on this list that should be? If you could change anything about the church debate, what would you change? I'd love to hear from you. 

Why I Hate Lecturing

I just finished a five-week stint at a large Lutheran church where anywhere from 50 to 100 adults show up for Bible study on a Sunday morning. I was asked to present five weeks on the gospel of Matthew. To the steering committee, I pitched  a lot of back-and-forth “working the crowd” on my part and small group interaction at tables. We tried that one week. People complained that they couldn’t hear. People commented that they expected this particular study to feature an expert, not “sharing.” It was observed that my questions to the small groups were perhaps too simplistic. After the first week, we went back to the standard lecture style. I got through the remaining four weeks, and I regard the whole experience as an ordeal.

Here is why I hate assignments like this one. They are fundamentally opposed to my calling, which is to teach people to read. Imagine the difference between watching an Olympics’ diving competition and going off the high dive yourself.  If after I have read the Bible with a group, they think, “Wow, that was great, but I could never see in the texts what you see,” I have failed. My job is not to perform (as in the Olympic high-dive competition) something fascinating but beyond the reach of those watching. My job is to coach the sport, and my success is measured by how well people execute their own dives after we have worked together for a while.

The other reason I hate lecturing is that it often turns Bible-reading into a parlor game, something to pass the time, like watching the History channel or the Food network. Such a pastime is interesting but not transformative. Sometimes in these adult forum-type settings, one gets the impression that the audience, having long since gotten past actually being encountered by scripture, is now just looking for something “interesting.” Like the philosophers in Acts 17, the people in the crowd “spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.”

I do not really believe this is where most people are who wander into a between-services Bible study at church, yet I never got a chance to find out where the scriptures actually touched the lives of my audience because, in the lecture model, they never got time to think about it and talk about it with each other or with me. Some of them reacted in question and answer format to my reading of texts, but they rarely reacted to the texts themselves. It was impossible to put the scripture at the center because that space was occupied by the teacher and the teacher’s observations.

So I spent five weeks feeling like my best teaching gifts could not be shared. And I learned (again) that I need to say no to invitations like this one. Maybe other people can lecture in such a way as to inspire people toward their own reading of scripture. I cannot, and it strikes me as foolish to try to do that when I do other things so much better.